Spaceport plans 'stair step' into space

GARRETT BRYCE

Published 7:00 pm, Tuesday, July 23, 2002

The Gulf Coast Spaceport Authority, an organization planning to open a launch site to send commercial payloads into orbit, has been focusing on a reusable launch vehicle that several aerospace businesses have been developing.

Fred Welch, chairman of the Spaceport Authority, said the effort is now taking a "stair step" approach by looking into building a facility for sounding rockets. Sounding rockets are used for research, and are small. The rockets require little infrastructure to launch, Welch said.

"They only require a cement launch pad and a bunker for the launch staff," Welch said.

The Spaceport Authority planned the stair step approach after Space Access, a lead contender in developing a vehicle for the spaceport, announced it would exploring additional avenues of business in California.

Welch said the president of California-based Space Access, Steve Wurst, decided to explore various uses for the technologies the company has patented. He also said the recent state of the economy has made such moves necessary.

"Investment capital has dried up," Welch said.

"What Steve is doing, and quite rightly, is looking at taking the technology and finding other uses for it."

Wurst's company has developed fuel injection technology which could apply in other areas of transportation such as creating lower-emission diesel engines.

Welch also noted that California offers technology grants for businesses such as Space Access.

"Unfortunately we don't have those kinds of tech grants at the state level (in Texas)," Welch said.

Space Access still plans to develop a vehicle to use at a spaceport, and the Gulf Coast Spaceport Authority is moving ahead with plans to build a facility to house it.

"We're moving ahead," Welch said.

Several other private entities are working on technologies to develop such a vehicle. One foundation, X-prize, has even offered a $10 million prize to the first business to build and launch an orbital craft.

X-prize's contest guidelines line out that the vehicle must be able to launch three people 62.5 miles above earth, safely return and repeat the launch again with the same vehicle inside two weeks.

Space Access plans to have a reusable vehicle by 2006. Welch said NASA believes the technology will be a reality in 2010.

"We'll probably meet somewhere in the middle," Welch said.

For now, Welch and the Spaceport group are finishing what he says is "Phase I" - an environmental study on a possible spaceport site in southern Brazoria County, which should be complete in August.

The study will help determine what launches can be performed in the area.

Then the project will move into Phase II, which will focus more on the "Steve Wurst's of the world."

Other counties such as Pecos and Willacy are also working on a spaceport project.

Building of a commercial facility such as the spaceport would create thousands of jobs and have a substantial economic impact on the region surrounding it.